- Plant workers and firefighters put their lives on the line to control a catastrophic April 1986 explosion at a Soviet nuclear power plant.
- While nuclear physics professor Valery Legasov hides evidence of what really happened, expecting to die soon and as scapegoat for the world's worst nuclear disaster that contributed to the demise of Soviet Union, he recalls the 1986 Chernobyl power plant disaster. The under-qualified night shift in the Ukrainian reactor control room is incapable of grasping, let alone controlling the nuclear reactions getting completely out of control. No timely warnings are given until the uranium rods escalate an unstoppable meltdown. Party officials pigheadedly keep pretending it's just a building fire, so time is wasted and people are contaminated before the horrible radiation symptoms became impossible to ignore and Moscow has to learn the truth. The KGB vice director is assigned by Gorbachov to handle it with outspoken expert Legasov as imposed counsel, whim he would prefer to dispose of but finds crucially, albeit inconveniently, knowledgeable. The rest of the world is kept ignorant, but alarming readings start raising questions.—KGF Vissers
- On the second anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, Valery Legasov (Jared Harris) (the deputy director of the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy), chief of the commission investigating it, records tapes blaming engineer Anatoly Dyatlov (Paul Ritter) (the assistant chief engineer at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant) and other superiors for the incident, before hiding the tapes and hanging himself. Anatoly had been sentenced for 10 yrs imprisonment and Legasov believes that 1) there were worse criminals at hand at Chernobyl 2) for what Anatoly did do, he deserved death. Before killing himself, Legasov hides the tapes in a secret location, saving it from the spies from KGB. He killed himself at 1:24:45 am.
Two years and one minute earlier, Apr 26, 1986 1:23:45 am in Pripyat, firefighter Vasily Ignatenko's (Adam Nagaitis) pregnant wife Lyudmilla (Jessie Buckley) is walking out of the bathroom of their apartment where she'd been vomiting. She witnesses Reactor 4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploding; there's a flash a few miles away, followed by a larger flash a few seconds later and then a large boom and a rumble from the ground.
At Reactor 4's control room, Dyatlov dismisses evidence that their reactor core has exploded. He calls in firefighters and workers, and futilely orders subordinates to manually lower control rods and restore cooling (sending coolant water into the reactor) before leaving his post. Multiple plant workers and firefighters, including Vasily, are subsequently exposed to acute radiation syndrome (ARS) (they can taste metal in the air). The firefighters find all manner of debris from the reactor core) laying around the site.
At 1:50 am Dyatlov orders Akimov (Sam Troughton), the night shift supervisor, to call in the day shift to try and continue pumping coolant water into the reactor. He simply refuses to believe eyewitness accounts of people having looked at the reactor core and seen the top blown off. Dyatlov checks the dosimeters which give a reading of 3.6 roentgens, but doesn't acknowledge that that's the max of the equipment he is using. The higher-level dosimeters are kept in a safe that none of the staff can open.
At 2:30 am Plant Director Bryukhanov (Con O'Neill), Chief Engineer Nikolai Fomin (Adrian Rawlins) and Dyatlov conclude that a hydrogen explosion caused leakage of contaminated vessel water, and at 5:20 AM the Pripyat Executive Committee elects to downplay the incident and blocks evacuation, despite some committee members witnessing radiation burns and vomiting from workers while coming into the plant. Everyone is very keen to ensure that they themselves cannot be blamed for the incidents at Chernobyl. Slowly the radiation dust reaches the town of Pripyat. The town is sealed and phone lines are cut to stop the spread of misinformation.
The water from the firefighters starts getting inside the reactor buildings and towards the basement, just below the reactor cores. Deputy chief operational engineer Sitnikov (Jamie Sives) reports seeing nuclear graphite on the ground, an observation rejected immediately by the senior staff and Akimov. He also reports readings of 200 roentgens on a different dosimeter (whose max capacity was 200). As Dyatlov succumbs to ARS, they force Sitnikov to the roof to make a visual inspection, where he receives a lethal dose of radiation. Legasov is informed of an under control accident at Chernobyl and ordered to provide technical advice to the committee managing the response.
Akimov and his junior assistant, Leonid Toptunov (Robert Emms) try to turn on the coolant pumps by hand, by going into the basement. They do what the can but begin to suffer from ARS and are evacuated.
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What is the broadcast (satellite or terrestrial TV) release date of 1:23:45 (2019) in Japan?
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